The following letter, edited for Labor
Standard, was sent to a wide range of antiwar lists and individuals on Jan.
25, 2003. The author is active in the New York City coalition against the war
on Iraq.

The redbaiting of our movement is taking the
form of attacks on the ANSWER coalition that initiated and largely organized
the October 26 and January 18 protests, which the whole movement eventually
supported and helped turn into truly massive antiwar protests. The redbaiting
is taking place in a coordinated, nationwide way. I have received reports about
it from Seattle and the Vancouver area, and I am sure it is going on in many
more places.

The publicists carry on about the Workers World
Party’s position on Yugoslavia or Hungary. (If Workers World has ever held an
unusual opinion about the Ottoman Empire or the Easter Island statues, I expect
to be fully informed of it soon.)

But it is becoming ever clearer that the target
of the attack is not a position on this or that “other issue” but the stance on
Iraq that our whole movement is increasingly united around—unconditional
opposition to the U.S. war. The redbaiters insist that the movement should be
fighting for the U.S. to wage the right kind of war against Iraq with the right
combination of international support at the right time. To oppose the war
outright—that’s extremism! That needs to be driven out of “legitimate” antiwar
protests, say the redbaiters.

Those of us who say no to an invasion of Iraq
regardless of whose backing Washington gets, regardless of what Hans Blix
reports [Blix is in charge of UN weapons inspections in Iraq], and regardless
of how the UN Security Council votes—the overwhelming majority of the
participants in the protests and the coalitions today—are supposed to back off
when the ANSWER label is pinned to us. The demonization of the ANSWER coalition
and the Workers World Party (which is the most prominent political party in
ANSWER) is aimed at all of us, and we must all publicly and loudly reject it
shoulder to shoulder with the ANSWER coalition and Workers World.

Jose Pérez, an antiwar activist from Atlanta, reports
in a letter I received yesterday that “Terry Gross of National Public Radio’s
program ‘Fresh Air’ gave half an hour of air time yesterday to one Todd Gitlin,
who was described as having been president of SDS [Students for a Democratic
Society] in 1963–1964 and is now a college professor.” Gitlin devoted much of
his talk to presenting the supposedly horrific litany of the political
positions of the Workers World Party, and arguing that for this reason they
should be barred from playing a leading role in the antiwar struggle.

“The most significant thing to note about Gitlin
and his ilk,” Pérez points out, “is that they are not against a war with
Iraq.”

Two weeks before the big antiwar march, was he
building it? Of course not!!! He was running it down.

“He came out strongly against people who carried
placards at an earlier protest at the United Nations with slogans like ‘NO
SANCTIONS! NO BOMBINGS!’ ” Pérez notes. Gitlin called them “cynics of the hard
left” and identified these positions accurately with the ANSWER coalition and
Workers World.

But hold on, that’s my position. That’s Leslie Cagan’s position. That’s David McReynolds’ position. (All are
active in the antiwar coalition.) In fact, I would lay a bet that was the
position of just about every (and maybe literally every) single one of the 160
people who attended the New York City meeting Thursday [Jan. 23] called by
United For Peace to build the February 15 action. We’re all “cynics of the hard
left” who oppose the bombings and sanctions that have killed a million people
in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.

“Now,” Gitlin continued, “those same cynics of
the hard left have moved to the front of the current anti-war movement.” And he
proclaimed, “This will not play in Peoria. It does not deserve to play in
Washington.” This was shortly before the October 26 demonstration.

Pérez points out: “Much to Mr. Gitlin’s
displeasure, I’m sure, it did play in Peoria, and in Washington, and even more
massively all over the country in the protests just held a week ago.

“So yesterday Mr. Gitlin was back on the attack,
urging a ‘nuanced’ view that opposes only ‘unilateral’ war, but devoting most
of his time to deriding the antiwar movement and people participating in it.”
ANSWER’s steering committee, he claimed, is made up of “very far left-wing
factions that probably total 100 members in America.’ ” An utter falsehood, of
course.

“Behind Gitlin’s redbaiting is support to
the U.S. war against Iraq, albeit with some doleful grimaces,” Pérez concludes.

Pérez quotes Gitlin as saying, “The
international sanctions against Iraq have been a humanitarian disaster for the
country’s civilians.” Gitlin admits this in his October column, laying out the
sucker-bait. “But,” Gitlin adds, “doesn’t Saddam Hussein bear some
responsibility for that disaster?” Saddam has done many things I disagree with,
but he did not impose the criminal sanctions on Iraq, or order them continued,
or use naval fleets to enforce them. Unlike Gitlin, Saddam has been
unconditionally opposed to the sanctions from the beginning. You have to give
him that.

Gitlin also apologizes for the current U.S.
bombing of Iraq: “The bombing—US and UK attacks in the no-fly zones of northern
and southern Iraq—are taking place under the auspices of a mission to protect
Iraqi Kurds in the north and Iraqi Shiites in the south.”(What a prettification of Washington’s policy!—FF)

Gitlin continues: “Again, the Iraqi leader bears
responsibility; Washington and London have made a credible case for the
no-fly-zone sorties because and only because Saddam Hussein has trampled these
long-suffering people in more ways than there is room to describe in this
space.”

Does anyone in this movement today believe that
the U.S. bombings are helping the Iraqi people, that they are better off
because U.S. bombings are devastating large parts of their country? Todd
Gitlin, who portrays himself as an opponent only of ANSWER, does.

(By the way, does Gitlin believe that the U.S
should have the right to bomb any country where parts or even most of the
population are oppressed? What about Spain, where the Basque nation is still
oppressed? Or the United Kingdom, which still occupies part of Ireland—well, I
guess Blair might not go along with the bombing in that instance. What about
Canada, where the Québécois are still striving for independence? What about
Israel? Not to mention scores of other countries on every continent.)

Gitlin’s singling out of the ANSWER coalition
and Workers World may be clever tactics, but only if we are all much stupider
than my experience with people in this movement has led me to believe.

“So when you get right down to it,” Pérez argues, correctly in my opinion, “Gitlin ‘supports’ the sanctions, ‘supports’
the bombing, and—although he is too clever or embarrassed to say so openly on
‘Fresh Air,’ laying it instead between the lines, he ‘supports’ the war against
Iraq, and his differences with Bush are strictly tactical over how to
wage that war, not whether to do so.”

So don’t be conned by the ANSWER baiters! They
are baiting you and me and, of course, the ANSWER coalition and Workers
World, too, as part of us. We have to fight back with a united,
unyielding, public and visible defense of the whole movement, including
the ANSWER coalition as an important component of our increasingly united
movement.